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Andre Braugher (Robinson) and Ruby Dee (as Mallie Robinson) in The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson. (Courtesy of Alamy)   Seventy-five years ago, Jackie Robinson broke major-league baseball’s modern-day color barrier, ushering himself into the history books and helping open the doors for so many more. A few years earlier, while in the U.S. military, […]

Jackie laughed. “Baseball isn’t all about home runs,” he said. “It’s a team sport. You have to trust the other players as much as you trust yourself.”1   A Big Day For Baseball (2019), written by Mary Pope Osborne and illustrated by Sal Murdocca. (Courtesy of Penguin Random House)   When Jackie Robinson debuted for […]

The subject of Jews and baseball is one that often inspires nostalgia, not thoughts about Jewish values. But for me, thinking about Jews and their role in “America’s game” is primarily about the Jewish passion for social justice. The connection begins with one of my favorite quotations, from the Hebrew Bible in the book of […]

Introduction and context The 1988 Winter Meetings were held at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, from Sunday, December 4, until Wednesday, December 7. These meetings came at the tail end of the collusion cases, as teams were beginning to open their wallets and spend money again, and a lot of teams were looking […]

Click here to download your free e-book edition or save 50% on the paperback of From Rube to Robinson: SABR’s Best Articles on Black Baseball, edited by John Graf (SABR, 2021)   It almost goes without saying, that were it not for the Negro Leagues, modern professional baseball would be in a much different place. […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. Author’s note: Jules Tygiel and I collaborated on this story for SPORT magazine in June 1988. Subsequently it appeared in SABR’s The National Pastime, in several editions of Total Baseball, and […]

Was Burt Shotton the best person to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Jackie Robinson’s historic rookie season? The “People’s Choice” is one person Branch Rickey may not have considered.

The word “daring” is associated with Chico Ruiz’s game-winning steal of home on September 21, 1964. “Insane” and “mad” are among the labels, too. But was he really so wrong? An analysis of the famous play in the National League pennant race.   “We’re playing Cincinnati. Two outs in the sixth inning, and we’re locked […]

Rachel Robinson and Ken Burns discuss Jackie Robinson’s legacy. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)   Ken Burns’s film, Jackie Robinson, perfectly fits the definition of a documentary by providing a factual record or report. As a Black member of the audience, it was extremely important for me to hear from Black people in cultural context and […]

Jackie Robinson’s time in Montreal was fleeting, but he still made an impact on baseball and the world in 1946. Before the 27-year-old Robinson began to wear the famous Brooklyn Dodger blue with number 42 on his back, he wore uniform number 9 and led the International League in batting with a .349 average (a […]